


small poppies

by darkcomedylateshow



Category: Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Character Study, Existential Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, POV Alternating, Vignettes, purple prose but with some funnies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:54:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27971939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkcomedylateshow/pseuds/darkcomedylateshow
Summary: The earth is always scorched wherever Zagreus goes—this is the nature of knowing him.(inspired by, and interspersed with, The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot)
Relationships: Thanatos/Zagreus (Hades Video Game)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 99





	1. Chapter 1

I.

We are the hollow men  
We are the stuffed men  
Leaning together  
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!  
Our dried voices, when   
We whisper together  
Are quiet and meaningless  
As wind in dry grass  
or rats' feet over broken glass  
In our dry cellar

"What do you want out of all this?" Megaera asks him, when he won't stop bothering her on her night off. “Seriously.”

“To be honest,” he says, in what feels like a well-rehearsed confession, “it’s not about my mother or father anymore.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know. Aren’t I allowed to want something more for myself? I’m not happy here.”

“Zagreus." She sits back in her chair, looking him in the eye for once. "Do you know anyone happy here?”

His face screws up. “Well—no. I guess Dusa's pretty happy?"

"Trust me, Dusa is not happy."

"I mean, she has a happy disposition. As of late." 

"Let me ask you this again," Meg says, swirling her snifter of nectar. "Why do you think mortals feel happy?"

"Because they've achieved something?"

"Because they're distracted. All mortals care about is avoiding death and pain. And so when you can’t really die, and you don’t care about pain—“

“I do _too_ care about pain,” he interjects. “What are you trying to say, that happiness is a mortal construct? What if I think it’s a noble, tangible thing I can seek out?”

"Then you're an even bigger fool than I thought you were." She is as flinty as ever, but Zagreus can always tell when she's not quite sure.

Shape without form, shade without colour,   
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

The earth is always scorched wherever Zagreus goes—this is the nature of knowing him. This is why his closest friends are an anxious gorgon and a skeleton who are both on his father's payroll. Everyone else just leaves, often without warning. Or their disapproval hardens into true coldness, or their attentiveness fades into supportive detachment.

Because this, too, was the nature of the house—to salve over the problem and return to business as usual. Dissent was an annoying disruption and nothing more. But while crossing between the house and the surface, the rules were different.

The air is growing cooler by the time the bell tolls and Thanatos stands before him. Honestly, he hates it when he appears like this, near-spectral, clothes billowing in a wisp of fog, feet never touching the ground. This is what Death looks like to its customers, to someone who should fear him.

"I thought you were angry with me," Zagreus says.

"I'm angry with what you're doing."

"You said I was a mess," he says, "and I know it's not just about the fact I'm leaving—it's about everything."

"You seriously want to go there?" Thanatos glances away, his voice going dim.

"All I'm trying to say is that—will you just tell me that you don't want me to go? Instead of just, materializing on occasion to passive-aggressively help me?"

"What else am I supposed to do?"

“Are you going to be the one who stops me, Than? Because it sounds like that's what you want.”

As Zagreus steps closer, something in the pit of his stomach feels gnarled and rotten. Thanatos looks down at him.

“I could destroy you,” he says, flatly. “It would be easy.”

“I’d let you.”

“It wouldn’t mean anything to you. It’d just be one of a thousand deaths.”

“Sure,” says Zagreus. “But it would be nice to be laid away by death incarnate, for a change, instead of my father, or some kind of poisonous rat or something.”

“Goodbye, Zag.”

“Wait, stop disappearing! Let me talk to you again.”

But he knows it’s too late, and it’s his fault. Sarcasm never gets him anywhere. There’s a chill in the air and once again the pale light of death washes over Elysium.

“See you later,” he says under his breath.

Those who have crossed  
With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom   
Remember us - if at all - not as lost  
Violent souls, but only  
As the hollow men   
The stuffed men. 

On the way back from the mortal world, Thanatos reconsiders what Sisyphus, the king condemned to eternal futility, had told him in passing about gods and humans—that they were very much alike, fear of death aside.

Zagreus used to be afraid of death, used to flinch at danger. Now each time Thanatos sees him, he's gotten more reckless. He veers too close to the action, never paces himself, and staggers back up to his feet when he really shouldn’t. There is something canid in his eyes, something raw and dangerous that should be repulsive, but fascinates instead. In the tangle of combat Thanatos watches him, bombarded by shadow and smoke, and the blurry image of this boy he’s known forever sharpens into something more frightening. It is not his talent at dealing death that frightens him. What frightens Thanatos is that he sees his infernal Prince, truly, for the first time.


	2. Chapter 2

II.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams  
In death's dream kingdom  
These do not appear:   
There, the eyes are  
Sunlight on a broken column   
There, is a tree swinging  
And voices are   
In the wind's singing   
More distant and more solemn   
Than a fading star.

After dozens of repetitions, the climb to Persephone's garden is well-burned into his memory. Smooth, untrodden snow giving way to patches of dead earth, dead earth yielding to brilliant green, the red eye of Helios warming the salt air. After that his memory is less reliable. There is the blinding light, and the ancient roots of the garden, the fruits of which he never has time to enjoy. After a while there is pain; not a cathartic vanquishing pain, but the inelegant shock of a mortal death. His limbs grow cold. The vision falls away, followed by the sound, and then there is a release, like lightning from his spine to his head. 

When Zagreus returns to the house, almost everyone is gone. It could have been either days or mere hours since his mother returned. The concept of time is growing more slippery. He wondered when it was he had his last encounter with Than, if he'd come back soon, if he'd ever get to see him on his own terms. He used to rely on him more than anyone, but that was a long time ago.

Nyx is standing in her usual place, but seems far away where she is usually preternaturally tuned in. It's only after he approaches her that she puts on a vaguely worried face. "How are you, my child?"

"Not bad," he says. "Now that Father and I can kill each other however and whenever we want, our relationship is _much_ improved, wouldn't you say?"

"I am glad you are able to make light of the situation," says Nyx.

“Right, forgive me, I forgot how utterly humorless everyone in this house is. Where do I even get it from?"

“Your mother,” Nyx says. "You get it from your mother."

Perhaps she doesn’t notice how this rattles him. Perhaps she does and can’t bring herself to correct it.

Let me be no nearer  
In death's dream kingdom   
Let me also wear  
Such deliberate disguises  
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves  
In a field  
Behaving as the wind behaves  
No nearer - 

Every now and then Thanatos came across mortals who had died of broken hearts. Sometimes they flung themselves into the ocean, sometimes they perished of old age days after their lover. Sometimes they died together, trapped under combat or clinging to each other in natural disaster—these were the most difficult, because they had to be taken separately, and wouldn't always find each other in the end.

As he understood it, for mortals love was not just an arcane impulse, but something that they universally felt they were owed. This made them behave very strangely, even after they'd been visited by Aphrodite, because it was very rare for the spasm of intense feeling to outweigh a lifetime of wanting. Where did they get the idea that love would complete them? Certainly not from his family's example. It wasn't the same at all. Within the culture of the gods, to fall in love was as spontaneous as a curse, or an act of self-treachery. It rarely ended well--it meant sea-change, it begot the type of stories that make it into songs. It meant everything he held most private etched in permanent stone.

So the way he showed his hand was very foolish, and very mortal, trying to pin some answer onto the open question of their relationship. It was not his place, or Zagreus' place, to rewrite fate, to untangle all the knots. Orpheus should not be allowed to descend again. No one should be absolved from their mistakes.

"How about a drink?" asks Achilles, who has been watching him brood near the railing for some time now.

"Excuse me?" Thanatos tries to sound irritated, but there's a creak in his voice. "Any reason why?"

"I see and hear plenty of things, milord," he says. The way he smiles at him suggests a schoolboy sense of humor, long since disappeared. A bit like Zagreus. "Perhaps we can commiserate." 

Not that final meeting   
In the twilight kingdom

The way the door to his chamber beckoned miserably from across the lounge! Thanatos took mental stock: the urns full of fragrant lilacs, blue laurels climbing the walls, Mother Night standing sentry. Before the garden reopened, the east hall was stagnant and smelled of the crypt. Now there was something like a cross-breeze, which to him recalled the the sultry mortal months of late spring, where they praised the sun and the fertile earth.

Achilles catches him looking. "I can feel that you're hurt."

"Is it that obvious?"

"No, but I recognize it," he says. "Should I speak to him? Frame it as a professional matter?" 

"Please don't," Thanatos starts to say, but then Meg stalks through the door. She spots them and starts coiling her whip around her wrist, a nervous habit.

"Megaera! Come and join us. I was just saying to Thanatos here" — Achilles gestures with his glass — "how _exciting_ this all is."

She shakes some of her hair off her shoulder. "Which part? The fact Zagreus actually did something?"

"You're too young to remember it, but there was a time where things in this house weren't completely fraught."

"And what influenced that, exactly?"

"Meg! Meg." Just then, Zagreus bursts after her through the door, then sees them all crowded around the table. "Oh. Hi, everyone."

"We were just talking about you," says Thanatos, with a faint smile.

"Oh, goodness," says Achilles, who is very drunk.

"I, uh, I don't know how to process that. Anyway, I came here to tell Meg that she was wrong."

"I can't wait," Meg says.

"My mum and dad are happy. So. There."

"Was that all?"

"That was all," Zag says, with a princely wave of the hand. "Continue."

He disappears into his room, leaving the three of them behind. What odd company they make, Thanatos thinks, as aimless and formless as the shades gathered near them, all wanting for things they'll never act on.

"I should go," he says. "I'm sorry about him, Meg."

"You're sorry on his behalf?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry."

He disappears again. The ghostly patrons jump at the sudden burst of light. The sheer drama of it all, thinks Achilles. He turns to Megaera, who looks down into her drink.


	3. Chapter 3

| 

III.

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

|   
---|---|---  
  
_The heart of a Fury_ is a tender, scalding little

thing, invented to inflict pain, not to dwell

on it. When she and Zagreus were younger,

and stupider, they took special joy in knowing

the terrible things they were supposed to do

when they grew up. Now he was blind to, or

awfully glib about the irony of it all: that they

would do the terrible things to each other.

|  | 

_Achilles feels very little_ these days, and when he does,

it's often dull, or muted, as if he's hearing it second-

hand. When he was younger, and more vigilant,

he'd have never guessed it would be foolishness

and not callousness that brought his downfall.

He had never been a kind man. He had not wanted

love, until he received it. Now he stood in the

hall, as functionless and empty as a suit of armor.  
  
| 

"I don't want to talk about it," Meg says.

"Believe me, Mistress, I understand." 

|   
  
And look at what he's done to Achilles, for

instance, stirring him up about his lost

war-lover, reneging on the judgment of

much older, much stronger gods. Does he

think he can just fix every broken marriage

north of Tartarus? Never mind his own pain.

Never mind the things he broke himself. 

|  | 

This nectar is strong, and it burns pleasantly in

his chest as he looks out over the lounge, feeling

Meg's appraising stare. These poor children, Achilles

thinks, trapped in their extended adolescence. When

they grow to be his age, or the Master’s age, will all

the pain have scarred over? Will they be kind gods?

Will they be as hollow, as fearful, as weak as him?  
  
| 

Is it like this

In death's other kingdom 

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone. 

|   
  
Mort has seen better days. The gray velvet that makes up his body has grown matted and dull, like an old dog's coat. One of his seams has been reinforced, from the time Cerberus mistook him for one of his chew toys and no one noticed until he had been paraded around in his jaws for several hours. Thanatos had sat, still teary-eyed, beside Nyx as she mended the tear with a needle and thread, packed its glowing stuffing back inside, and handed it back to him. He remembers this incident because of how impressed he was at her ability to be both Mother and god, performing an act of service with that genteel, detached nature — it became the example he would follow in his own duties, in time.

Afterwards he was terrified of anything else happening to Mort, and he became more of an heirloom he had to protect, but the idea of giving him away was too painful. At a certain point when he even saw Mort on his shelf he couldn't help but think of his fable, the tiny ruler picking on his dominion of insects, and in turn couldn't help thinking of Zagreus. Putting it in his possession was not an impulse decision; Thanatos had kept himself, very deliberately, at arm's length for some time. But this had become a partnership, for better or worse, and he had to mend it, too. And the dread he felt at first over making himself available at Zag's beck and call gave way to an odd excitement. He didn't mind ceding control. He was tired of protecting himself. 

"Than. Can you come here?" He has a flash of him in his vision, alone outside the Temple of Styx, clutching Mort to his chest. An edge of panic to his voice, but he's not in any danger. This is not a work-related call, so Thanatos ignores it. He hears him scoff. "Come on. Please? I really need you here."

("He just takes and takes," Meg had said to him, once, "and he knows exactly what he's doing.") 

Thanatos has never even been up here before. It's not his place. The field of snow is criss-crossed with ankle deep gutters, streaked with mud from the torn-up earth. And blood, much of which belongs to Zagreus. He sits there, huddled on a melted patch of ground, catching his breath. In moments like this he looks very small, much closer to a boy he recognizes.

"You're alright," Thanatos says, in that way that's stuck between a question and a statement. Of course, he's not really alright — he's hurt, though he doesn't seem to care much, and the cold air makes his skin look almost waxy. Thanatos plants the end of his scythe in a snowbank and holds out both hands towards Zag, who takes them and hoists himself up.

"Yes, I'm alright," he says, wavering a little on his feet, "I think — sorry, it’s just I think my father just — he may have just said he was proud of me?"

"He did?"

"Those weren't his exact words, but he, ah, complimented my fighting in a way that _wasn't_ full of utter contempt, so I'm going to count it as a victory."

"Here. Be careful." Thanatos holds out the crook of his arm, which Zagreus accepts, awkward and unsteady. They pick up their weapons and keep walking. "You have to understand that he cares about you."

"You sound like Nyx," he says, with a grin. "Anyway, he has an awfully strange way of showing it."

"If he didn't love you, in his way, you wouldn't have made it this far."

It's quiet for a moment, save for the sound of him trudging along while Thanatos hovers, Stygius dragging through the snow behind him. They stop at the stone gates, the outside world beckoning through. 

"I can't go with you."

"You can't," Zag says, "or you shouldn't?"

"I — fine. Just don't tell anyone." 

"Well, you're in luck." Zagreus tightens his grip on his arm, as they stagger out into the bitter cold. "No one will see us here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the first segment of this chapter might not work on mobile/e-reader! sorry about that, but u can see what it's supposed to look like [here](https://lenucciagreco.tumblr.com/post/638006546607095808/small-poppies-hades-video-game-2018-archive)  
> also, thank you for all your kind comments and for tolerating this weirdly short slow burn poem fic. i have So Many Thoughts and have been trying to rein myself in so i don't go insane.  
> 


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